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Scoring
Maintaining and increasing your Faith, short of the relatively elementary task of collecting Point items, is the single most important factor affecting your score. All of the advice below is given with the Faith meter in mind.
- A good overall benchmark for your Faith meter on Easy and Normal modes is 100,000*(Stage number). In other words, at the end of Stage 4, it is not unreasonable to suggest that your Faith be at or around 400,000.
Item Collection
- The value of point items and spell card bonuses is linked to your Faith meter, which is constantly decreasing. Since defeating enemies, and collecting items cause the Faith meter to temporarily stop decreasing, you should try to always have either something to shoot or something to collect on screen at all times.
- This is not easy during periods where no enemies appear for a long while (for instance, just before bosses emerge or during stage titles). To last through these occasions without suffering a large loss of Faith, try to collect items individually and slowly instead of using the POC to collect them all at once. As each item renews the bar that keeps the Faith meter from dropping, this tactic will extend the length of time you can sustain a constant amount of Faith.
- While all items refill the Faith bar, only Faith items add to it. Therefore, where the option is available Faith items should always be collected first.
- The beginning of Stage 1 is a great example of an application. Slowly move from right to left to destroy the fairies, and then collect the items that fall at the bottom of the screen, starting with the Faith item. If executed well, the Faith meter will not begin to decrease until the next wave of fairies appears.
- When bosses or sub-bosses appear on screen, your Faith remains constant. Immediately move to the POC to collect every item on screen at maximum value, especially in the dialogue before boss battles when there are guaranteed to be no attacks to dodge in the meanwhile.
Bombing for Score
Bombing reduces your Faith by 3,000 points. In addition, the 20 small Power items that are required to return to the power level you were at before bombing represent a loss of 2,000 potential Faith points (since Power items convert to small Faith orbs at Full Power Mode). With this said, on Normal mode a single Faith star is worth 5,000 Faith (and on Hard or Lunatic, even more). Just by bombing in order to auto-collect a single Faith star, in terms of Faith you have broken even. In addition, every bullet that enters the bomb's radius converts to an item worth 10 Faith, and with this constant inflow of Faith items your Faith meter will not decrease. Moreover, the added damage done to enemies by the bomb will likely destroy them, allowing you to auto-collect the items they drop.
Simply put, on Normal or above, when playing at full power bombing offensively or to collect items you would otherwise not be able to reach is highly encouraged, especially in areas with high bullet density or in places where enemies cannot be destroyed before an item drought occurs (notably when fighting the large fairies in Stages 4 and 5). On Hard and Lunatic difficulties, the penalties for bombing twice and thrice respectively before returning to Full Power Mode can be made up by a single Faith star... but before doing so, consider your ability to survive at the lower power levels.
Note that this does not apply to Easy Mode very well. It is somewhat unlikely to gain five Points stars (the amount necessary to make up the loss of Faith from bombing) within the space of one bomb, and even if it does occur the increase in Faith would not likely be large.
Death and Faith
Recall that the prescribed target for your total Faith is 100,000 times the number of your current stage. However, dying costs [(Faith Score - 50,000) / 3] Faith - a third of what you have accumulated over the minimum so far. Now assume that you have just passed Stage 3 with 300,000 Faith and die immediately at the beginning of Stage 4 - precisely in the middle of the game. Your Faith will lower by 83,333 points. Considering that in each stage except the first you are expected to accumulate 100,000 additional Faith points, you have in effect lost the vast majority of the Faith built up from an entire stage.
This hurts your scoring capability twofold. First, note that (assuming that you do not die any more) every Point item is worth 83,333 points (or some fraction thereof if Points items are not collected above the POC) less until the end of the game. Considering how many Point items are left in the game, this single death is a tremendous cut into your final score! Second, enemy Spell Card Bonuses reflect a more conglomerate display of how many points are lost. Assuming for the purposes of an example that immediately following the above death you captured an enemy Spell Card at its maximum value, the difference in bonuses would be 4766674 points versus 6600000 points - a difference of almost twenty million points!
Simply put, dying is an absolute deathblow to a high score in this game, more so than in any other Windows game. Make absolutely sure to avoid careless deaths; bomb when in doubt (particularly in the stages, where bombing is usually beneficial anyway).
- Return to Mountain of Faith.